Covid Inquiry

DaisyAnneReturns

Many lost the possibility of choosing madyone. Tolerance of the process is the least they should be able to expect.

Precisely.

Many lost the possibility of choosing madyone. Tolerance of the process is the least they should be able to expect.

Oh Lord, I’ll have lost the will to live before then.

maddyone

Is this circus really going to go on for three years?
Please tell me I misunderstood.

No, you haven't misunderstood. It's going on until 2026.

This is only the second module, there have been 6 announced so far.

covid19.public-inquiry.uk/structure-of-the-inquiry/

maddyone

Is this circus really going to go on for three years?
Please tell me I misunderstood.

By the time lessons are learned, we might have another pandemic and still be unprepared!

Is this circus really going to go on for three years?
Please tell me I misunderstood.

Whitewavemark2

For those who haven t lost the will to live yet, - isn’t it surprising how all the government ministers giving evidence so far were all subjected to the failure of government at the top to appreciate just how brilliant they were and how under-appreciated their competence was

😄😄😄😄

Love it. Well said Whitewave.

For those who haven t lost the will to live yet, - isn’t it surprising how all the government ministers giving evidence so far were all subjected to the failure of government at the top to appreciate just how brilliant they were and how under-appreciated their competence was

😄😄😄😄

MaizieD

^the implications would be discussed in committee and the risks would be clearly understood^

Good lord, Casdon. Do you seriously think that 'they' were that rational? Have you been following the hearings?

Yes I have, and as far as the medical and technical input was concerned, yes, I do believe they worked together as much as they could, very much against the odds.

the implications would be discussed in committee and the risks would be clearly understood

Good lord, Casdon. Do you seriously think that 'they' were that rational? Have you been following the hearings?

I agree that was a stupid thing to say, probably off the cuff. She wouldn’t have made a unilateral decision to say that people had to be discharged from hospital to make way for the influx of covid admissions though, the implications would be discussed in committee and the risks would be clearly understood.

Casdon

Jenny Harries didn’t actually say that it was fine to discharge people into care homes Maybee, she said that a decision was taken in light of a huge surge in admissions to hospitals, that the hospitals should be used to care for the most sick who would benefit from hospital care. The consequence of that was that people would be discharged home and to care homes who were less sick, knowing that some of them may have Covid.

She’s the one who got into trouble for saying the shortage of PPE was down to misuse by nursing staff. I think she was sidelined for a while after that comment.

I think what you have to ask yourself is whether in the circumstances the hospital staff should have prioritised Covid patients who stood the best chance of survival even if that meant discharging people who may have Covid home or to care homes. That’s how stark it was at one point. I’m not defending the actions, but I was still working at that point and I know that hospital staff were faced with extreme choices, that was the reality. When she talked about clinically appropriate she was relating it to making a choice between a rock and a hard place.

Not in so many words, but she said it was 'clinically appropriate' to discharge patients with covid into care homes.

How could she possibly have believed that to be 'clinically appropriate'? To discharge patients with a disease known to be highly infectious, and with a high mortality rate in the elderly, into a setting full of vulnerable residents?

twitter.com/Kit_Yates_Maths/status/1729832227096207582

Jenny Harries didn’t actually say that it was fine to discharge people into care homes Maybee, she said that a decision was taken in light of a huge surge in admissions to hospitals, that the hospitals should be used to care for the most sick who would benefit from hospital care. The consequence of that was that people would be discharged home and to care homes who were less sick, knowing that some of them may have Covid.

Is anyone still following the inquiry?

So far this week we've had Andy Burnham on Monday very, very angry because the metropolitan Mayors weren't consulted about decisions being made about their areas and were blocked from giving meaningful input. Also about having to stand down the local experienced and effective Public Health tracing operation in favour of the dire Test, Trace and Isolate programme

As Burnham was Health Minister in the last Labour government while the swine flu epidemic was ongoing. He has knowledge of dealing with epidemics/pandemics from both government and local government experience.

Then we had Michael Gove basically denying responsibility for the Cabinet Office, the office he was Minister responsible for...

Yesterday was Jennie Harris, who is now, unbelievably, head of the UK Health Security Agency, which has already been severely criticised by the Commons Public Accounts Committee (July 2023), who knew it wasn't safe to discharge people into care homes, but told us that it was fine, because the government told her to lie for them...

She was the one who told us at the time that children were unlikely to get covid, that mass gatherings were safe and that masks weren't any use..

Transcripts and videos here:

covid19.public-inquiry.uk/hearings/core-uk-decision-making-and-political-governance-module-2-public-hearings/

Can you imagine a scenario where all the witnesses in the Inquiry say that this was a purely ministerial decision, but actually a nameless civil servant had been charged by ministers with informing Sir Chris Whitty that such a huge policy decision had been made but that he wasn’t allowed to disagree with it? If you can, how disrespectful do you think that was? I don’t believe for a minute that’s how it was, Whitty definitely meant ministers when he said he hadn’t been informed.
This is corroborated by the civil servants as well as all the scientific advisers.
www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/eat-out-to-help-out-johnson-sunak-blindsided-covid-inquiry-taskforce-scheme

I read what he said. He just said No 10.

It was not the responsibility of civil servants to consult with the scientific advisors about a government decision of that nature Aveline, so no, Sir Chris Whitty definitely meant ministers when he referred to No. 10. Its is explained in detail here.
www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/chris-rishi-sunak-boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-england-b1122001.html

Telling 'No10' about 'reservations', (at what stage? After it had been announced?) is completely different from being consulted about the scheme. Whitty, Vallance and Van Tam have all said that they weren't consulted.

Whitty did say that he'd told 'No10' about his reservations re Eat out to help out but this may not have been passed on. Civil servant didn't pass it on? If not who?

I have absolutely no confidence in anything Sunak did, or does now!

Eat out to help out was clearly done without consulting Ballance, Whitty or Van Tam. A bad idea from Sunak.

Iam64, I certainly wasn't looking to the government - to lead me anywhere

I have almost gone the other way.
If a government says one thing, I think the opposite is likely to be true.
Sad state of affairs.
But I actually take some guidance from doing the opposite. My opinion, of their collective wisdom, is that low.
I was quite horrified at how slavish[cant think of right word], people were to what they were saying.

Who are these mindless idiots who think making death threats, death threats that they would never actually do - except that you cannot know. What do they get from it?

I look forward to the time when AI will mean that once such threats are forwarded to the police by the recipient, the police can use AI to immediately identify the sender and whizz them into court within days and slap large fines on them, which are collected with assiduity.